| 13 Dec 2024: Two weeks after COP29 has ended with a disappointing climate finance goal and lacklustre, at times gridlocked, negotiation outcomes for other areas like Just Transition. That being said, I find myself hopeful reflecting upon my experience at my first COP.
Ask anyone and they will say the same thing “Your first COP will always be the most overwhelming one,” and the same applied to me. Running up and down the confusing layout of the venue every day, boxed in with the grey, turquoise-lined walls, limited natural sunlight and hollow stomping of delegates, it’s impossible not to feel confused. Thankfully I wasn’t the only person from my organisation, Youths United for Earth (YUFE), who was at COP. What once started as an annual meeting has grown into a blockbuster event. COP is not only where negotiations happen, it’s a spectacle. Pavilions, side events, and networking hubs, while all necessary to supplement the missing voices within the negotiation space, act as a distraction to the real meat of the event. This sentiment isn’t purely my own, it has been echoed amongst the spectrum of delegates present.
Soon, after connecting with activists and UN colleagues present at COP, I was able to tune my bearings and focus, on my overarching goal at COP, both in my capacity as the Director of Advocacy of YUFE and part of UNICEF-EAPRO’s Young People’s Action Team, which is to get more youth voices to be meaningfully integrated into decision-making spaces, and in this case, the UNFCCC negotiation process. Seeing other youths from our neighbours, Thailand and Indonesia, be part of the party delegation as full-fledged negotiators only reaffirms that it is possible to include us.
To many, it might not seem clear why this is important, but even if we inspect the main item of this year’s Finance COP we see cracks where youth and especially children fall through. In the case of climate finance, we (young people and children) are only afforded 2.4% of global climate finance per a recent UNICEF report and this is only the tip of the iceberg. You must also keep in mind that young people don’t exist in silos, the multiplicity of a young person’s identity (i.e. indigeneity, gender identity, socioeconomic status etc.) only compounds the climate impacts that we’re already susceptible to. This is why we wanted to champion this message.
Later in the week, we prepared reports on certain negotiation topics such as Action on Climate Empowerment (a negotiation track we have never been involved in) and the need for youth negotiators, offering internal and external models like the Youth Negotiator Academy or the Singaporean Youth Delegate model, and we engaged negotiators from the Department of Environment who were responsible for the mitigation track. By the end of the two weeks, we set down with the Malaysian Youth Delegation (MYD) as a united front to push this agenda to YB Minister Nik Nazmi during our bilateral. I was hopeful to see not only the interest of the minister on youth involvement in this arena but also how keen other actors, both public and private, were on including young people within the COP and UNFCCC process. But much still needs to be done post-COP to make sure these plans and pledges are followed through.
It wasn’t easy trying to break their preconceived notions about young people, in some ways we succeeded and failed to make them understand that we were as capable as them of having a grasp on the negotiations, that we were capable of more than just being rapporteurs or social media people (some roles that were suggested), that we too can fight for Malaysia in this international arena. I was talking to a youth negotiator from Thailand when she told me that in certain negotiations for adaptation or mitigation, youth negotiators are the ones who are the most outspoken. Fighting not only for their country/voting bloc but also for the young and marginalized people who don’t have the same platform as they have. Additionally, learning from my colleagues from the Philippines how they come to COP with a united front with all the CSOs young and old to demand greater ambition from their country and the developing nations and how they come up with one-pagers for certain negotiations that is used as a reference point also shows how we can synergise to achieve a common collective goal. This was the future I imagined for us.
What came to me as a mild surprise was that Malaysia hasn’t properly negotiated for quite some time, it’s a can of worms but to put it simply most of the negotiators present were attending their first COP with a few wanting to give interventions but aren’t able to without the head of party’s approval and mostly their participation involved writing reports.
It is an odd thing to see negotiators having to hold themselves back and it echoed what I saw outside of the meeting rooms. Along with our efforts to lobby, which we learned is more than just having bilaterals, we supported our climate justice advocates and activists from the global sphere. Be that writing/giving speeches, painting banners or holding placards for the actions we co-organise. Actions are just another way to say protests, but you can’t technically protest at COP and this year especially the CSO space has been muzzled, with regulations I didn’t know existed: the number of people participating must be the same as what is registered (50 pax must be 50), no names of countries not even the one you’re from, no saying “free Palestine”, no name shaming and you must only protest within designated spaces.
Actions aren’t just about being angry, they’re about highlighting injustices that are happening as COP. Injustices that aren’t given enough space inside events or even negotiation spaces. It’s a platform for those who are present to share their stories and put pressure on negotiators. To hold the line. This was a notion that our party took, that the organisers like us were protesting against them; when in reality, most of the time we were fighting for the same thing: a just and equitable climate action framework, to ensure accountability from the developing world who have systematically exploited our resources.
For a lot of people, even at COP, negotiation spaces aren’t accessible. For context, there are three main delegate badges that you can get: party/party overflow, observer and UN. pink, yellow and blue. Different badges grant you different access to spaces with party/party overflow and UN badges have the highest access for a normal delegate. Because of this, there is a clear segregation between observers and the rest. I was fortunate enough to be able to receive party overflow accreditation which allowed me to experience these spaces. I found it interesting to see voting blocs huddling in corners of the room deciding what to do next or how diplomatic language could be lost even to the chairs of the negotiation rooms. But still, for many who get to enter or tune into negotiations via the virtual platform, they’re met with highly technical and colonialist language which bars participation from key stakeholders that face the brunt of climate change.
The most jarring experience I had was when my Danish activist friends and I tried to attend a press conference held by the Danish government which included the Colombian environment minister we were interested to see it because this was around the time when it came out the Danish government were still exploring fossil fuel projects even though they were still chairing the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance ( and their parliament passed a controversial law regarding the agricultural industry. Instead of being let in like the rest we were stopped, threatened and berated by a security person from the Danish party at the entrance of the room. The reason? We had tape on us on which we wrote “Pay Up!” one of the main slogans to get the developed world to pay their fair share for climate finance. Not shocking for an imperialist and colonialist power to act in such a way, but it only took two words to sound the alarms.
And this is a universal experience of environmental defenders and activists at COP and beyond those walls. These are the same countries that flaunt their “green initiatives” and point fingers at the developing world teaching us what climate justice means but yet they silence and ignore dissent, fund the expansion of fossil fuel projects, strike out progressive language from texts and stall negotiations. One negotiation on just transition lasted until 3.00 am with one intervention from the US urging that the line that says “the right to clean and healthy environment” and a few other rights be stricken out of the text and this is just one example of many.
As much as the UNFCCC tries to create an inclusive process, COP is still a highly exclusive space (whether that be visa, badge accreditation, funding, etc.), which results in solutions that leave marginalized communities behind. I was lucky to have the support of Yayasan Khazanah both in terms of funding and on the ground support later into week two. I realise the immense privilege I carried to be able to navigate these spaces and tried my best to champion the voices of those who weren’t at COP during my side events throughout the two weeks. Be it cultural resilience, climate communication and youth empowerment I made it a point to ground myself within the local context of Malaysia and use this platform to highlight best practices and injustices happening to our marginalized communities.
COP is a humbling experience especially when I attended The People’s Plenary. For me, I considered this as the crowning jewel of the event, a plenary session by the people for the people which started with activists holding the names of those martyred in Gaza. Throughout the plenary, I heard the horrors experienced by Indigenous environmental defenders, Palestinians, Sudanese, Balochistan people. I had already known that environmental justice can’t be achieved without social justice and this reaffirmed it. At the end of the plenary, we all took a pledge to fight to protect our communities and the environment. Because we weren’t allowed to march out with our banners as usual, members of the organising committee passed around masking tape to write Pay Up and put it over our mouths as we walk out of the hall. I saw the warmth of the people and the solidarity amongst the CSOs and activists.
When I was younger, I used to think that the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP) was the place where decisions are made, where real impact happens, but attending my first one this year revealed the inner workings of the climate movement and how COP isn’t the end rather it’s the start of a very long journey. The outcomes of COP29 be it as it may, governments may disappoint us but in the end, a brighter future is possible if we work collectively.
“The people united will never be defeated”